About Jaroslaw:It was near the end of winter when I was traveling by foot from Terror Mountain to Neopia Central to get some medicine for our unfortunate Kyrii brother, who had come down with a bad case of extreme Spyder Bite. You see, he was bitten by a Mutant Spyder that some kid had brought into our cheap motel on the border of Happy Valley and "forgotten" to take it back. They had the cure for normal Spyder Bite in the area, but our brother's Spyder Bite was so serious that the doctor said we would have to go to the Pharmacy in Neopia Central to get a special cure for it. Our younger Aisha sister already had a sprained ankle, so I was the only one who could go. Besides, she tended to get seasick, nearly throwing up several times while we were on our way to Terror Mountain’s shore.

While I was speedily walking along, my ears caught something in the roaring winds that wasn't actually wind. I thought I was hearing things at first, but "something" made a louder, painful-sounding noise, so I came closer to check it. I soon discovered a Petpet trapped in a hidden pit in the snow and quickly dug it up. The source of the sound was a small Kookith; its rectangular shape is unmistakable. However, I had never seen a Kookith this white before. Maybe it was a blue one? This Kookith's strips were gray instead of violet, though. Also, there was something very unusual about this little critter: it had a tiny pair of (damaged) Pteri-like feathered wings. Sure, winged Petpets aren't that rare, but Faerie Kookiths have... faerie-like wings. Feathered wings? They looked so bizarre! The Kookith was dirty, had wounds that were infected, and was scared of Neopets (or maybe it was just scared of me, I wasn't sure). I guessed that it was a wild one, or at least had lived in the wild for a time. The poor thing kept trying to flap its wings to escape from me, but it was no use. It had lost too many feathers. I gave the Kookith some chips and beans to calm it down. It checked the food then slowly ate it, but it still kept its eyes on me.

"Don't be scared. I'm not going to hurt you," I said, trying to express with my voice that I wasn't a threat to it. I wasn't sure if it understood me, but it let me pat its head lightly.

"I would give you to the Petpet Protection League agency in Happy Valley so they could look after you and find out if you had an owner, but I'm in a hurry right now. I need to get a cure for my brother fast, you see, so I hope you aren't the sort who gets seasick!"

The Kookith blinked, but didn’t do anything else.

***

"And that was how I found this little guy," I explained while the curious Kookith in question sniffed our brother's blanket. (Or, at least it looked like it was sniffing... do Kookiths even have noses?) Our brother had slowly recovered after he got the cure, as had our sister's ankle.

"The Petpet agency had posted images of the Kookith around the area, but they haven't had any contact so far," our sister said while trying to feed the Kookith a chip. "They'll keep looking for a while, but they suggested that you can start thinking about keeping it, since they saw that you're good with Petpets."

"I guess I wouldn't mind keeping it," I said, scratching my head while thinking it over. The Kookith strangely turned back and looked at me.

"What would you call it? Not 'It,' I suppose..." our brother joked, then coughed right after that.

"Hmm." I looked out of the closed glass window. It was still snowing (hardly a surprise, since it seems like it's always snowing here), but back at our home in Roo Island the weather had probably gotten warmer to prepare for spring, even though seasonal change is never very obvious there.

"I will call it Jaroslaw, but its nickname will be Jaro for short," I said. "It means 'beauty of spring' in a language from a faraway land."

Jaroslaw flapped its wings with newly-grown feathers and managed to rise above a blanket a few inches before falling back.

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